beating Jesus

I wonder if I’ve ever done spiritual violence to Jesus. Oh, I know, we all have a share in his torturous death on the cross, but this morning, I’m thinking of something more immediate.

I was reading through Mark 12 and I got to the parable of the tenants in the vineyard. When the owner sends messengers, the tenants beat them. When he sends his son, they kill him. It’s a power grab. It’s trying to retain control.

And then, this, in verse 12: “Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.”

Think of that. Jesus knew the religious leaders wanted to kill him, and now they knew he knew. Yet this pointed parable didn’t change their mind.

Even when Jesus pointed out, in this tale, that he was sent by the master of the church. Even when his story clearly stated the criminality of killing the son. Even then, they went ahead, because they wouldn’t give up control of the church.

I’ve been in leadership positions in my church off and on for decades. Have I ever, in that time, brushed off or even belittled someone whose proposed change may have been Jesus moving them? Worse, have I ever undermined people behind their backs to prevent change I don’t like? In those ways, may I have done the same thing that the tenants of the vineyard, and the religious leaders of Jesus day? Have I refused to hear God’s messengers? Have I turned them away? Have I ever turned Jesus away because he didn’t look in that moment like I expected him to look – like me?

I don’t know. I can’t think of a specific time, but it sounds like something I could have done. Or could do, still. It bears watching.